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Reconstruction and Resistance in Post-Civil War Florida
Amos Kendall and the Rise of American Democracy
A rare, fascinating personality emerges in Donald B. Cole’s biography of Amos Kendall (1789–1869), the reputed intellectual engine behind Andrew Jackson’s administration and an influential figure in the transformation of young America from an agrarian republic to a capitalist democracy. After helping Jackson win the election of 1828, Kendall became the president’s chief advisor—speech writer, postmaster general, and author of the famous veto of the bill to recharter the Bank of the United States. Born on a small Massachusetts farm and educated at Dartmouth, Kendall moved to Kentucky as a young man to seek his fortune and eventually became one of the very few nationally prominent antebellum politicians who successfully combined northern origins and southern experience. Kendall’s role in democratizing American politics is shown in a compelling narrative of his evolution from a republican idealist to a democratic individualist who contributed greatly to the rise of the Democratic party. His innovative campaign techniques and direct appeals to ordinary voters helped attract Americans to the polls; yet Kendall, like many of his contemporaries, also had a limited egalitarian vision that excluded the participation of women, African Americans, and Native Americans. In that sense, Cole demonstrates, Kendall was a man of his time, in an era of unprecedented transformations in politics, economics, and technology. Unforgettable in appearance and manner—a gaunt, white-haired, reclusive hypochondriac—Kendall inspired mystery as well as awe in admirers and enemies. He exemplified the American self-made man in his rise from a struggling jack-of-all-trades to a wealthy Washingtonian. His story also offers a fresh look at important elements of the antebellum communications revolution: he was deeply involved in the expansion of the post office and in the rise of the telegraph, and as a philanthropist he founded the school for the deaf that became Gallaudet College. The first biography of Kendall, this superbly written and researched volume unfolds the rise of American democracy and the culture that created it.
Radical Religion and Reform in a Revolutionary Age
As part biography and part microhistory, Jacob Green’s Revolution tells a fascinating story about revolution, politics, religion, and reform by focusing on two pivotal figures in New Jersey’s revolutionary drama—Jacob Green, a radical Presbyterian minister who advocated revolution, and Thomas Bradbury Chandler, a conservative Anglican minister from Elizabeth Town who was a leading loyalist spokesman in America. Both men were towering intellects who were shaped by Puritan culture and the Enlightenment, and both became acclaimed writers and leading figures in New Jersey—Green for the rebelling colonists, Chandler for the king. Through their stories, this book examines the ways in which religion influenced reform during a pivotal time in American history.
Jacob Jump, the dark and meticulously crafted first novel from Eric Morris, follows a weeklong ill-fated boating trip down the Savannah River from Augusta, Georgia, to the lighthouse at Tybee Island. Chance and danger trump planning and intention at every turn, and the pull of the historic river and of fate itself propels Morris’s characters with unrelenting force. Old friends Thomas Verdery and William Rhind, each seeking temporary escape from the failures of their lives, take to the river with Rhind’s father. Verdery, a native southerner, has left his job and lover in Nepaug, Connecticut, while Rhind has lost his wife and child to his drinking. Encounters with dangerous weather and unhinged locals imperil the trio, who are held at gunpoint when they try to dock and soon are fighting among themselves. The hazards of the trip and a shocking loss along the way exacerbate William Rhind’s drinking and tendencies toward violence. When Verdery and Rhind must become reluctant custodians to young Caron Lee, a lost girl from the backwoods family that had previously accosted them, tensions build toward explosive ends as the serene open waters of the Atlantic Ocean wait just beyond reach on the unknown, unknowable horizon. Guided by a host of influences from William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway to Cormac McCarthy, James Dickey, and Ron Rash, Morris’s prose brings readers deep into the uncertainties of a still-wild southern landscape and of the frailties of the human heart yearning for past and future alike while pulled along by the inescapable current of the present. Best-selling writer and Story River Books editor at large Pat Conroy provides a foreword to the novel.
A General's Life
General Jacob L. "Jake" Devers (1897--1979) was one of only two officers -- the other was Omar C. Bradley -- to command an army group during the decisive campaigns of 1944--1945 that liberated Europe and ended the war with Nazi Germany. After the war, Devers led the Army Ground Forces in the United States and eventually retired in 1949 after forty years of service. Despite incredible successes on the battlefield, General George C. Marshall's "dependable man" remains one of the most underrated and overlooked figures of his generation.
In this definitive biography, James Scott Wheeler delivers a groundbreaking reassessment of the American commander whose contributions to victory in Europe are topped only by General Dwight D. Eisenhower's. Wheeler's exhaustively researched chronicle of Devers's life and career reveals a leader who demonstrated an extraordinary ability to cut through red tape and solve complex problems. Nevertheless, Eisenhower disliked Devers -- a fact laid bare when he ordered Devers's Sixth Army Group to halt at the Rhine. After the war, Eisenhower's and Bradley's accounts of the generals' disagreements over strategy and tactics became received wisdom, to the detriment of Devers's reputation.
An essential contribution to twentieth-century history, Jacob L. Devers provides a fresh and nuanced interpretation of the senior command during World War II and offers a new perspective on a highly accomplished soldier.
A Case for Rethinking Family History
Joseph A. Amato follows his own poor, obscure, and truly "mongrel" family through seven generations, revealing their place in the key events of America's past. Using powerful family traditions to clarify his personal connection to the larger stories of our nation, Amato advocates for the power of the history closest at hand in building personal identity and resisting mass culture.
Professor Woloch shows that Jacobinism survived and forcefully developed into a constitutional party under the conservative Directorial republic. The Jacobin legacy was a mode of political activism—the local political club—and a constellation of attitudes which might be called the "democratic persuasion." By focusing on the nature of this persuasion and the way that it was articulated in the Neo-Jacobin clubs, the author provides a fresh perspective on the history of Jacobinism, and on the fate of the Directorial republic.
Originally published in 1970.
The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
officer, gentleman, entrepreneur
The documentary biography of Jacques Legardeur de Saint-Pierre, an officer in the Troupes de la Marine, who served throughout New France, sheds new light on the business activity of French colonial officers stationed in the West. Many of the eighty previously untranslated documents in Jacques Legardeur de Saint-Pierre demonstrate the extent and profitability of Saint-Pierre's pursuit of business activities while performing official duties in eighteenth- century French North America. The quest for profit permeated Saint- Pierre's career, particularly his command of the Western Sea Post after he succeeded the fabled Pierre Gaultier de Varennes et de la Vérendrye. Saint-Pierre and his secret partner General Jacques- Pierre de Taffanel de La Jonquière, Intendant François Bigot, and Meret, secretary to La Jonquière, used their positions to engage in extensive trade, especially brandy, with the Cree and Assiniboine northwest of Lake Superior. Saint-Pierre's activities provide fresh insights into the North American fur trade
An Intellectual Profile
In Jacques Maritain: An Intellectual Profile, Jude P. Dougherty shares his lifetime interest in and study of Maritain with readers. He offers the most complete introduction to Maritain yet to be published, highlighting Maritain's many contributions to philosophy.
La création d'un espace amoureux